This workshop is sponsored by the Donald D. Harrington Fellows Program at UT Austin. It is organized by Ashwini Deo (Harrington Faculty Fellow-2012-13) with the support of the UT Linguistics Department.

Typological and grammaticalization research on the meaning of semantic categories like tense/aspect, modality, possession, and negation has uncovered many systematic diachronic patterns in the linkings between form and meaning. These patterns take the form of unidirectional diachronic trajectories - recurring cross-linguistic regularities in the ways that grammatical morphemes undergo semantic change. Well-known examples include:

These robust empirical observations give rise to three basic questions:

1. Why do the meanings of functional expressions change over time? 2. How do the meanings of functional expressions change over time? 3. Why do we see cross-linguistic similarities in patterns of semantic change?

The goal of this workshop is to bring together two groups of researchers: specifically, researchers working on problems of semantic variability and change from within the paradigm of formal semantics/pragmatics and researchers working on these questions from within the grammaticalization paradigm. The workshop aims to engender dialogue on whether and how robust diachronic observations and insights about meaning change emerging from the typological and grammaticalization paradigm can/cannot be modeled using semantic and pragmatic tools and whether attempts at translation between these paradigms can be fruitful for both approaches to meaning. In view of this, abstracts that attempt to address questions of grammaticalization and evolution of semantic categories within formal frameworks are particularly welcome.

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts should consist of a two page description (12pt font, including references and data). Abstracts should be emailed to semanticchangeaustingmail.com. Authors should include title of the proposal, name of the author(s) and affiliation in the body of the email.